


Lonely Harmonies

by Linden



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series, Somnophilia, Wet Dream
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:56:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3252299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/pseuds/Linden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean maybe gets why John insists on separate beds, these days.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title hijacked from The Civil Wars’ _Finding North_. Which I might be just a little bit in love with.

**July 1998**

'We're going to be killed in our beds,' Sam announced, as he climbed out of the back of the Impala, slow and stiff. The rambling, run-down house they'd finally stopped in front of in the Georgia woods was only twenty minutes or so outside of town, but it was at the end of a narrow, twisting dirt road that they'd arrived at only by bouncing down several other narrow, twisting dirt roads and across one clearing; they hadn't seen another house in five miles, or a car in twenty-five. 'We're going to be  _raped_  in our beds. Dad!' he hollered. Their father was already halfway to the front door, digging a set of keys out of his back pocket; he didn't turn around. 'Didn't you ever see  _Deliverance_?'

Dean snorted back a laugh from where he was unfolding himself from the driver's seat.  Christ, he was exhausted. 'Helpful tip?' he offered, as he closed the door with a bang. 'Don't squeal like a pig, Sammy.'

Ah, bitchface #3. Always a classic. 'Dude, that's not funny!'

Dean grinned at him, obnoxious and bright. 'Aw, c'mon. It's a little funny, isn't it?'  His back popped, painfully, as he straightened up and stretched. He and John had been driving in shifts for thirty-seven hours, California to Georgia, and despite the gas stops and grocery runs, Dean was fairly certain that his hips had locked up on the other side of Louisiana and were never going to work again. He was also fairly certain Sammy's face was gonna freeze in that scowl if he kept it up. 'All right, grumpy. C'mon. Help me get our shit inside,' he said, catching hold of the worn collar line of Sam's tee and tugging him with him toward the trunk. 'I'm not haulin' your eighty pounds of rabbit food around by myself.' They'd stopped at a Walmart two hours ago, where John had told them to stock themselves up for a few weeks; why Sam had thought they'd needed a bag of oranges and ten thousand kinds of vegetables and a box of friggin'  _granola_ , he was never gonna understand.

Sam smacked his hand away. 'It's not  _rabbit food_ , asshat.'

'We could put it out back and have, like, sixteen Thumpers in our yard in an hour, buttmunch.' Dean popped the trunk, tossed Sam both his duffel, swung his own and their father's over his shoulder, hauled four of their Walmart bags from the trunk. 'Wanna? You could have a little party out there with all your bunny friends. Eat broccoli and apples together and shit.'

'They eat flowers and grass, Dean!'

'. . . dude, how do you even know that?' he demanded, following his grouchy little brother up toward the house. 'You can't tell me the first damn thing about a timing chain, but you know what freakin'  _rabbits_  eat. You got problems, Sammy.'  They ducked inside together, stopped together, looked over the place in weary resignation together, everything dim with the dusk-light streaming in through dirty windows. The house must have been nice enough when it had been first built, Dean thought—dove-tailed corners, solid walls, solid stairs heading up to the second floor—but that had probably been a good, y'know, seventy-three years ago now, and this evening the place smelled like mold and must and dampness, and the air was every bit as stiflingly hot and muggy in here as it was outside. Dean wasn't putting down money on there being an air conditioner, either. Dean wasn't putting down money on there being  _lights_.

'I'm sleeping in the car,' Sam muttered.

'Yeah, well. You're gonna be fightin' me for the back seat,' he replied, and felt a warm tug in his chest at the smile Sam tipped up at him, reluctant and wry but sweet, all the same. He looked away before he could linger on how much he wanted to bend and kiss it off his brother's pretty mouth. 'Dad?' he called, into the dim house. 'You dead?'

There were weary footsteps in the shadows, and then John leaned around a doorframe a moment later. 'Yes, Dean. I accidentally electrocuted myself checking the fuse box.’

Dean eased the bags to the floor. ‘You’re grumpy when you miss supper; anyone ever tell you that?’

John just looked at him, wearily, and pushed a hand back through his hair. ‘Most of the fuses are blown,’ he said. ‘But the fridge and stove are running, and Cormac left storm candles in the pantry last time he was here. Should be good enough until tomorrow; we can pick some bulbs and fuses up in town when we go in. Sam, get the windows open in here and then come upstairs and help me with the beds, and Dean, get the cooler and the rest of what we need out of the car.  I want the salt lines down before the daylight goes.'

Dean nodded, once, and headed back out into the dying summer dusk.

***

Nine o'clock found them eating a late supper in the kitchen, crowded around the rickety table by candlelight, the three of them together. Dean had been planning on frying up some burgers, the kind that Sammy liked with pineapple in the middle, but it had been too damn hot to cook. It was very nearly too damn hot to _eat_. He'd thrown together a pile of sandwiches and opened a bag of potato chips instead, cut up a cucumber and carrot into thick veggie sticks and added them to Sam's plate, and then shouted "Food!" in the general direction of the stairs and sat down in front of his own. Ten minutes later he was pretty sure that the backs of his thighs were permanently stuck to the chair. All of the windows in the house were open, upstairs and down, but outside the night air was close and humid and utterly still, not so much as a breath of wind to help blow out the heat. If Dean didn't melt into the floorboards before morning, he was going to count himself a lucky man.

They didn't talk much as they ate, all of them tired and sweltering in the muggy dark, but the sandwiches were good—bread crusty, tomatoes sweet, turkey cold and mustard spicy, ten times better than the week-old egg-salads-on-rye they'd been picking up at every gas station between San Diego and northern Georgia. After a little bit Sam got up to get himself another bottle of water, got Dean another beer without asking. The kid had ditched his tee and jeans and trainers somewhere upstairs earlier, was now crunching quietly through his carrot sticks and the second half of his third sandwich in nothing but a pair of old track shorts, damp with sweat and loose on his hips and clinging to the curve of his soft cock. Dean was doing his damnedest to pay attention to nothing but his food, but the table was small, and Sammy was so close, and as his little brother grumbled about the heat and slumped back in his chair, legs spread and head tipped back, Dean let his eyes skip, just for a minute, over all that damp bare skin, along the lean ladder of Sammy's ribs in the candlelight, his slim waist, broadening shoulders, the long smooth line of his throat.  Felt his own cock thicken, just a little, felt his heart clench, hard and painful, behind his ribs. 

He’d been so sure, last summer, that he’d be able to get a handle on this . . . this _wanting_ , so sure that it was just some passing fever, that he just needed a little time. But all time had done was darken Sam’s hair and lengthen his bones and narrow his hips and sweeten his smile; all time had done was hammer this hopeless, helpless feeling ever deeper into Dean’s chest, leaving him feeling raw and tender and painfully vulnerable inside. He could ignore it, most of the time, could go—had gone—weeks on end without thinking too much about how he wanted to tumble Sam into a bed and keep him there, how he wanted to taste those miles of scarred silken skin, find out what made him laugh, what made him moan, what would make him break apart under Dean's mouth and hands. He could ignore it. Did ignore it.

But it was getting harder, the more Sam grew up.

Weary, aching, Dean looked away from his baby brother, found their father watching him steadily from across the table, eyes utterly expressionless in the chancy, flickering light.

Dean kept his face clear and still, and wondered, not for the first time, how much John knew.

After a moment their father got up, went to get the beer Sam hadn't brought him from the fridge. Dean cracked the cap of his own open with his ring, and took a long, weary slug.

He needed to get some sleep. 

***

He wasn't going to get any, anytime soon, because they apparently had work to do.

After supper John handed Sam a stack of their preliminary case notes to pin to the kitchen wall and pointed Dean toward their weapons bags, and although Dean felt very strongly that a far more productive use of his time would be to go out and maybe kill someone for money for an air conditioner, and then go _buy_ an air conditioner and install it before they all died from fucking heat exhaustion, he grabbed a few more candles from the pantry and went into the living room all the same, tossed a clean drop cloth down and got to work. An hour rolled by, slow as molasses: Dad and Sam drifting between the books at the kitchen table and papers they'd pinned to the kitchen wall, muttering at each other occasionally across the empty cans of Mountain Dew (Sam) and beer (Dad) that were piling slowly up between them; Dean cleaning their guns on the living room floor, Dad's Beretta and his own familiar Colt, and the Taurus that Sam's slim capable hands were just really starting to grow into. Annoyed though he was, he let the familiar routine and the feel of cool metal and the scent of gun oil lull him into a sort of waking doze all the same, hands moving easy and precise, utterly on autopilot, and so it was a long moment before he realized that the low murmur of voices in the kitchen was rising into something shout-y and sparking and dangerous, and had been for awhile. 

'—go telling me it's a bad plan just because you're tired and want to—' 

'I'm not telling you it's a bad plan because I'm tired! I'm telling you it's a bad plan because it's  _stupid_ and it's _wrong_!' Sam hollered, and Dean's head came up, sharply. _Holy shit_. 'Dad, Jesus, _listen to me_. It's not a rifter, okay?  _It's not a rifter_. It can't be, because the blood splatter doesn't  _fit_  a rifter; it fits a freakin' werewalker. I studied them for three weeks at Bobby's last summer. I read about them in  _Latin_. I know what I'm talking—'

'Watch your—'

'I’m not gonna watch my goddamned tone!  I know what this  _is_ , damn it! I know how to kill it! And you're gonna have us chasing our tails while it goes to ground for another seventy years instead, because you're too fucking stubborn and drunk to _listen to—_

Dean was already on his feet and moving before he heard the unmistakable  _crack_  of his father’s hand, was at the door in time to see Sam's pretty head snapping sideways, something ugly and red already blooming on his cheek, half a heartbeat before John backhanded him across the other side of his face for good measure, split Sammy's lip open against the kid's teeth and the edge of his own ring. The sound was loud and flat and ugly, and there was blood on John's knuckles, wet and dark.

The kitchen was utterly silent, save for the soft, shocked huffs of Sam's breath. Dean could hear the rasp of them with perfect, painful clarity, from where he stood with one hand white-knuckled on the jamb beside him.

His little brother put a hand to his mouth, shaking, eyes wide and wet. His fingers came away bloody. He stared at them for a moment, then looked up at their father, and Dean could see it, feel it: shock giving way to hurt giving way to grief giving way to anger, his brother's temper _cracking_ ; and Dean was across the room before he ever even registered he was moving, just as the kid started to take a swing back at the man. _Holy fucking Christ, no._ He yanked Sam back against his chest and hauled him back away from their father, and though his little brother wasn't all that little anymore, Dean still had half a foot and a good fifty pounds on him, and no matter how much he twisted and kicked Sam couldn't get free.

'Let me go! Dean!  _Let me go_!'

'Sam, Sammy, c'mon—'

Sam wrenched hard against Dean's arms, cursing. 'I hate you!' he shouted at their father, kicking, as John stood watching them both, his eyes dark for half a heartbeat with a shaken, stricken regret Dean already knew he would never, ever give voice to. ' _I hate you_!' and Dean turned them both away, arms still tight around his little brother, his hands gripping Sam's wrists, pinning them to the kid’s chest. He manhandled him through the door and into the living room and didn't let him go until they were on the other side of it, near the stairs. Dean was ready for him to turn, to try to dodge back around him, but Sam just took off up the staircase, two steps at a time, and the slam of a door overhead was loud and final and sharp.

It was quiet, then, the cheap wall clock ticking loud and steady in the living room, the faucet dripping in a soft counterpoint in the kitchen beyond. Dean pushed a hand through his hair, turned to look at their father. The same familiar excuses he always made for the man were tumbling through his mind ( _it was the heat; it was the hunt; he's been drinking; he's tired; we're all tired; he wouldn't have done it/said it/meant it sober/this morning/tomorrow_ ), but none of them were sticking this time, not the way they usually did, not the way they always had. Because that hadn't been just a smack across the face for disobedience or disrespect; there had been blood all over his baby brother's mouth, bright and wet, blood smeared across his teeth, dripping down his chin, and that wasn't—Dean couldn't—

John was scrubbing a hand across his face, weary and slow, the lines around his mouth looking twice as deep as they had a minute ago, and Dean felt a familiar, faithful pulse of love and worry amid the hot knot of fury in his chest. It hurt. Their father met his eyes, just for a moment, and then he was reaching for his keys, shoving his feet back into his boots, heading unsteadily for the door. He had his hand on the knob when Dean spoke.

'Dad.' His throat ached, chest burned.

John pulled the door open, paused, didn't turn. His shoulders were tight, the humid dark flooding in all around him.

'You ever hit him like that again,' Dean said, quietly, 'and Sammy ain’t gonna be the one hittin’ back.’

The door closed, a moment later, with a soft _click_ at their father's back.


	2. Chapter 2

It was pitch-black upstairs, and utterly silent, and Dean stood for a moment, listening, a storm candle and two makeshift cold packs in hand—frozen vegetables wrapped in dish cloths, a Winchester family special.

'Sammy?' he called, quietly.

He found him on the bed Dean had claimed for his own earlier that evening, curled up on his side in the dark and looking so like the little boy he'd once been that Dean felt the heavy, hollow hurt of it in his gut.  He put the candle down on the crappy little bedside table and sat down beside his brother, cold packs in his lap, old mattress creaking gently beneath his weight. Ran a hand up Sam's knobby spine, squeezed at the back of his neck. ‘Sammy,’ he said again, still quietly, and after a long moment Sam rolled onto his back. In the flickering light his eyes were red and his cheeks wet and his pretty mouth still bloody, and his breath was hitching, softly, in his throat. Dean knew that most of what was boiling under his skin was anger, could see it in his face, but there was little-boy hurt there, too, lingering in the corners of his mouth, in the dampness of his lashes, because for all of the fights and shouting and the epic, angry silences, for everything that had just happened downstairs, Sam loved their father, fiercely, far more than Dean thought John knew. 

Dean took careful hold of his chin, turned his face gently toward the candlelight, bit back the curse that was blooming in his throat. The imprint of their father's hand was already darkening on Sam's left cheek, and an ugly bruise from the man's knuckles was blossoming on the right, and while the cut in the kid's lip wasn't deep enough to need stitches, it was ragged and it was messy, and it was gonna make eating a pain in the ass for a couple of days.   _Son of a bitch._

Sam was watching him with tired eyes. 'That bad?' he asked, softly.

Dean rubbed a gentle, gentle thumb along his jawline. 'You've had worse,' he said, as quietly. Then, holding up three fingers: 'How many we got, kiddo?' he asked.

Sam flipped him off, wearily, and Dean clucked.

'Nope. Off by two,' he said, and added a fourth. 'Try again.'

Sam sighed. 'Dean—'

‘Sam. This is not a fucking joke.’ And it wasn't, it really wasn't; Sammy had already gotten his brains scrambled a week ago when a cranky poltergeist had tossed him against a wall, and if their father had gone and made it worse—Dean waggled his fingers at him. 'How many?'

'Four,' Sam groused. 

'Awesome.' He pressed one bag of frozen peas carefully against the side of his brother's face, pulled Sam's hand up to keep it there. 'What highway did we pick up in Texas?'

' _Dean_.'

'Humor me.' He bent to rummage out an antiseptic wipe and the A&D from their med kit in his duffel beside the bed.  'What highway?'

'Twen—' Sam hissed at the sudden sting on his lip. 'Twenty,' he said, as Dean wiped the fresh bubble of blood gently from his mouth, smeared some ointment across it. 'Our last name's Winchester, Dad's a jackass, and we're in Georgia. He only slapped me, Dean. I don’t have another concussion.'

'Yeah? What's seventeen times twenty-two?'

'Three hundred seventy four.'

Dean blinked, startled. ' . . . seriously?'

Sam's smile was small and reluctant, and it clearly hurt, but it was real, all the same. 'Yeah,' he said, softly. 

'Huh,' Dean cradled the other bag of frozen veggies against his brother’s other cheek and the edge of his torn mouth. Then: 'Nerd,' he added, and Sam's laugh was nothing much more than a huff of air, but it was a laugh, all the same. Dean smiled back, brushed soft, soft bangs off Sam’s forehead with his free hand, let his fingers slide a little into the messy tumble of the kid’s hair. Sam didn't pull away. 

'He wouldn't listen to me,' he whispered.

'I know.'

There was something desperate in his little brother's face as he looked up at him. 'Dean, you gotta believe me, please; I'm  _right_  about this, and he won't—'

'Shh, shh. I believe you,' he said, because he did. Sam could be an arrogant little shit sometimes, but if the kid said he knew something, then he knew it cold, and Dean would willingly wager— _had_ willingly wagered, more than once—his life on his baby's brother's brains. 'We'll figure it out tomorrow, all right?' he promised, softly. 'You and me,' and Sam nodded, but there were already tears in his eyes again, tired and angry and hurt, and after a minute he shifted onto his right side, face pillowed on frozen peas, pulled his knees up a little again until he was curled around his brother, until he could press his forehead into the side of Dean’s thigh, eyes closed, lashes wet. Dean kept a hand in his tousled hair and the other cold pack against his face and let him stay there, both of them silent in the muggy dark.

It was another ten, maybe fifteen minutes before Dean lifted the bag, shifted his brother a little to get the other from beneath his cheek, took another look at his pretty face. Satisfied that the bruises weren't swelling much, he went looking through his duffel again, this time for their stash of meds, and found the pouch already open. He glanced over at his brother. 'You take something already, Sammy?' he asked, and Sam nodded, winced, held still. Flexed his jaw, gently.

‘Orange bottle,’ he said. 'Tylenol?'

Dean's mouth quirked, just a little. If it had been in the orange bottle, it had been Vicodin, but Dean figured there wasn't much harm in it. The pills would knock the kid out for awhile, let him get some real rest; and Tylenol wouldn't have done shit for the headache that would've kept him up half the night, anyway. 'Uh, yeah,' he said. 'Tylenol. Good. You take two?'

'Yeah.' Still curled on his side, Sam was tangling his fingers in the hem of Dean's tee, looking so fucking _young_ that Dean's heart ached. His voice was quiet. 'Dad take off?'

' . . . yeah, kiddo.'

Sam let his eyes close, his mouth twisting just a little, tense and unhappy. 'He shouldn't be driving,' he whispered.

'Yeah, well.' Dean carded a hand through his little brother's hair again, nails gentle against his scalp. 'He shouldn't've been drivin' back from that bar in Martinsville last month, either.' Or from the package store in Oakland, or the bar in Winslow, or the one just outside of Louisville; there were a lot of places John shouldn't have been driving back from, lately. He and Sammy didn't talk about it, ever, and it wasn't like he was gonna say anything to their _dad_ , Jesus, but John had been drinking more this spring and summer than Dean had ever seen him, and it was only getting worse. Nightmares of their car wrapped around a tree, their father crumpled dead behind the wheel, had been dogging Dean's sleep for months.

Bad nights painted John bleeding out on the hood, the windshield shattered all around him.

With an effort, Dean pushed the images away, the same way he did every night that he woke up to find their father's bed still empty, the dream-echo of tires squealing on pavement sharp and high in his ears. 'He'll be okay, Sammy,' he promised, because John had to be; he was . . . he was their dad. 'Everything's gonna be okay, all right? It'll . . . it'll all be better when you wake up. You just gotta get some sleep, little brother.'

It wasn't true, and Dean knew it wasn't true, and he hated himself for saying it anyway. But it was the only thing he had to offer his little brother just now: ice for his face, and a hand in his hair, and the same tired, familiar lie he'd been telling him all their lives. _Dad’s gonna be here for Christmas, just like he always is. It'll all be better when you wake up. We're not gonna have to move before the science fair, Sammy. It'll all be better when you wake up. Dad'll be here for your birthday next year, I promise. It'll all be better when you wake up._ Sam didn't call him on it, just tightened his fingers a little in Dean's shirt, looked up at him with eyes that were sleepy and soft and chocolate-dark in the dim light. ' . . . c'n I stay with you?' he asked.

Dean knew exactly what their father would have thought of that request, couldn't right now bring himself to care. 'Yeah,' he replied, softly. 'Yeah, a'course, kiddo. Just budge up, okay?'

Sam shifted over a little as Dean leaned to blow out the candle, its thin skein of smoke visible for half a heartbeat before the darkness swallowed it whole. Dean stood to skin out of his jeans and pull his sweaty tee off over his head, kept his boxers on, then crawled onto the narrow bed with his little brother. It was too hot for this, it really was, and they were too  _old_ for this, and Dean knew it, but Sammy tucked right into his side anyway, just wrapped himself right around him as though Dean were his personal property, the same way he had when he'd been four, seven, twelve and a half; and Dean brought a hand up to cup the back of his dark head before he thought twice about it, fingers sinking into the tumble of silky, tangled hair, his mouth and nose following a minute after. They'd been in the car since Tuesday afternoon, sleeping and awake, and it had to be eighty-five degrees in this cramped little room, but even sweaty and sticky-hot and two days from clean, Sam still smelled so good to him, salty and earthy and like _brother_ and  _belonging_ and _home,_ and if his cock were swelling a little in his boxers at the warmth of that scent, and at the feel of all that smooth soft skin pressed against him, well—it's not like that was anything  _new_ , these days, and it's not like it was anything he didn't have practice at ignoring. 

He closed his eyes, Sam a familiar, welcome weight in his arms, worry and want and love and comfort and lust tangled up so tight together in his chest that it hurt to breathe past the ache of it.

'Dean?' Sam said, softly, after a little while.

He swallowed. He breathed. 'Yeah.'

Sam tucked his head more firmly against Dean's chest, curled closer, made himself small. ' . . . thanks,' he whispered, the tension in his muscles draining out slow and steady, like water, like blood.

Dean never knew which of them was the first to fall asleep.

***

It was maybe three hours later when he woke again, impossibly hot in the humid, sweltering dark. He wasn’t entirely certain where or who he was for a moment, but by the time his brain had coughed up _in Georgia_ and _Sam’s-brother-Dad’s-son-Dean_ , it had also processed that he was sweating buckets and more than half hard in his shorts, mostly because Sammy was sprawled entirely on top of him, dead to the world, hands and forearms tucked under Dean's shoulders in a sleepy sort of hug. He was squirming in his sleep, and tiny hiccupping pants were catching in his throat; barely half-awake and sluggish with the heat, Dean thought at first the kid was having a nightmare, was about to wake him up when Sammy hitched himself a little higher, and Dean felt the firm, solid warmth of his brother's cock sliding against his thigh.

Sam moaned, softly, in his sleep.

Later that morning, in the shower, head bent and hands braced against the wall, icy water sluicing down his back until there was an ache blooming in his temples and he was shivering and shriveled with the cold, Dean would think that if he had just pushed his little brother off of him right then, everything might have been all right. But he was still half-asleep, and half-convinced that he was dreaming, and Sam felt so good on him that he lay motionless beneath him for a long moment more; and by the time his brain came all the way online Sam's hips had already found a clumsy rhythm and he was pushing his hot damp face into the crook of Dean's neck, making these whimpery, hurt little noises that were so impossibly hot Dean could feel his own toes curling. _Shit._  He pushed his head back into his pillow, squeezed his eyes shut as his cock thickened and swelled and pumped out a warm slick of precome in his shorts, as the sharp twists of  _want_  curled in his stomach, low and deep.  _Oh, shit, shit_—

He had to stop this. Clearly. He had to get Sam to stop this, had to wake him up, he had to  _wake him up_ , but there was some sort of fundamental disconnect going on between his turned-on body and his panicky brain, because his hands were fisting in the sheets beneath him instead of moving his little brother off of him; and his thighs were loosening, spreading, knees sliding up to let Sam sink in to the warm cradle of his hips.  His brother made a sharp, filthy little sound at the feel of it, fingers digging into Dean’s shoulder blades, both of their cocks trapped against their stomachs now, sliding hot together through the sweat and slick soaking their shorts. Dean swallowed against the moan rising in his throat, forced himself to keep his hips still, his _hands_ still, because this wasn’t—he couldn’t—Sam was sleeping; Jesus, he was _high_ ; didn’t know what he was doing, was probably dreaming of that pretty little high school girl from Tucson who'd asked him to the sophomore dance—

His little brother's bruised mouth was open against Dean's throat now, hot, wet, his slim hips jerking fast and hard; legs spreading a little to get him in even closer, forcing Dean’s thighs wider, opening him up. Sam was panting, softly, and the sounds spilling out of him were changing, sounding frustrated, lost, like Sammy needed help, like he needed _Dean_.

Dizzy with want, Dean started to rock up into his thrusts, steadying his rhythm, guiding him into a rough, easy ride. Sam’s ragged nails were bright hot points of pain against his back, the kid’s startled moans puffing just beneath his ear in the dark, and Dean couldn’t help the sound that punched out of his chest this time, the way his back arched, one arm wrapping around his brother’s shoulders, the other around his ribs— _good so good how the fuck is it possibly this good_ —and a moment later he felt Sam’s lithe body tighten and then lock up entirely in his arms half a heartbeat before the kid came, on a hard helpless thrust and a long low moan and with a damp blossom of heat against Dean’s stomach. Sammy didn’t wake. Cock pulsing, body trembling, his breaths huffed warm and wet and unsteady against Dean’s throat for a long moment, and then they slowed and settled back into the easy, usual rhythm of his sleep as he stilled, semen splattered wet and hot against Dean’s skin, body heavy and lax and so, so warm.

 _Don’t_ , Dean told himself desperately,  _don’t, don’t, it was just for him, it was just for Sammy,_  but he couldn't stop the rocking of his hips now; pinned as he was beneath Sam’s weight and warmth, surrounded by his scent, it took him only three more thrusts before there was a hook-pull of white heat wrenching through his gut and punching up his spine and then he was coming, hard, harder than he had in God only knew how long, biting his lip to keep from moaning as the hot pulses of his orgasm tore through him, vicious and sweet and so fucking  _good_  that his breath was coming in soft, sobbing gasps that he couldn’t seem to slow even after he started to come down, aftershocks rattling through him like static in his bones. He had one arm still locked around Sam’s ribs and his face buried in his little brother’s hair, his other hand white-knuckled in the sheets beside them, and Sam was snoring softly into his neck, blissfully unaware of the fact that Dean had just violently and utterly unraveled beneath him, with him, because of him. 

_Sammy. Sammy. Sam._

He was aware, dimly, that he needed to move. Needed to move Sam, needed to get himself cleaned up, but his body was still ringing like a sounded bell, and his muscles felt so heavy he could scarcely lift his eyelids, never mind move his arms, his legs, his baby brother.  Sleep crept up on him, wound around him, and pulled him down gently into the dark, with Sam still cuddled close and utterly content against him.


	3. Chapter 3

Sam swam back toward consciousness easy and slow, aware at first only of a dull, distant sort of throbbing in his face. It escalated, rapidly, into a singing, hammering ache as he came all the way awake, pain exploding all along his cheek and jaw and in the muscles of his neck, with bright stinging sparks tearing into the left side of his mouth. For half a heartbeat he was waking six months ago in Salem Hospital, an IV in his hand and Dean sitting sleepless and worried and pale beside his bed, and then he blinked and the world swam into focus around him: no hospital, just a small hot room in an unfamiliar house, early light painting the walls in morning-gold and shadow. It took him a moment to remember what had happened ( _Dad drunk angry pain_ ); and a moment longer to realize that he was both alone and lonely ( _Dean where's Dean I want Dean_); and still one moment more before he became aware of the dried mess in his shorts, itchy and sticky and uncomfortable, and felt a hot flush rising in his cheeks. _Shit._ There were the tatters of a sweet, sweet dream about Dean lingering just beyond the edges of his memory, and he squeezed his eyes shut and hoped, with a desperation he generally reserved for hunts that went more than a little sideways and the fourth quarters of Brick Holmes' football games, that his brother had gotten up before he'd jizzed in his sleep, because the teasing was going to be epic, if he hadn't. Dean had been gentle with him the first time Sam had woken wet and confused and still trembling with the aftershocks of orgasm, in their crappy trailer outside Achille; since then, whenever Dean had found him stuffing damp sheets or wet boxers into a washer at 5 AM, he'd snickered and called him Old Faithful for a week.

It was enough to make Sam wonder, sometimes, why he'd ever fallen in love with his brother in the first place.

He sat up, slowly, embarrassed and sore. There were a handful of cheap Ritz knockoffs on a napkin on the bedside table, along with a glass of water and three ibuprofen, but there were no snarky-ass notes about geysers, and no sketches of geysers, and Dean hadn't arranged the crackers in the _shape_ of a geyser, so maybe he was in the clear. He ate the crackers, quietly, before he knocked back the pills and the water. His mouth hurt. His jaw hurt. Everything above his shoulders hurt. He got to his feet and padded down the hall to the bathroom, took a shower in the company of a spider roughly the size of Kentucky, then did a half-assed job of drying off and pulled on a pair of shorts and one of Dean's old band tees, the Deep Purple one Sam had found for him a year ago at a thrift store in Nevada. His bare feet were quiet on the stairs.

Dean wasn't in the living room—but their father was, snoring facedown into the cushions of the long narrow couch, boots still on, one arm hanging over the side. The twist Sam felt in his gut was equal parts relief and anger and disgust and sadness, and he turned away, silently, too raw inside to deal with anything having to do with John this early in the morning. Dean wasn't in the kitchen, either, though he found what looked like the remnants of a fried egg in the skillet in the sink and half a pot of coffee on the stove. Sam poured himself half a cup, filled the rest with milk, rummaged out four of the sugar packets he regularly hijacked from diners, and then went outside to look for his brother. 

He found him by the car around the side of the house, hood popped, toolbox open on a nearby stump. Their tiny weather radio, perched on the fender, was putting forth equal bursts of static and what sounded like a talk show, and Sam was pretty sure that Dean was doing something . . . engine-like, though he had no idea what. His brother looked up at the quiet shuffle of his footsteps, eyes impossibly, beautifully green in his impossible, beautiful face, and as they flicked over Sam's bruises Dean's soft mouth twisted into something unhappy and upset.

'Jesus, Sammy,' he said, straightening.

Sam shrugged. He wanted to say that it looked worse than it felt, but it felt pretty damn bad, so he settled on sipping at his coffee instead, careful of his cut lip. 

'You take the Motrin I left you?'

He nodded. Shuffled a little closer to peer under the hood. 'Dad fuck up the car?' he asked, voice still rough from sleep.

Dean shook his head. 'Nah.' He'd taken a shower earlier, clearly; Sam could smell the clean sweetness of soap on his sun-warmed skin, and it stirred a confusing, familiar blend of comfort and arousal in his gut. For a moment he wanted nothing more in the world than to drop his coffee and just push his face into his brother's chest and wrap his arms around his waist; he wasn't sure whether he wanted his brother to just cuddle him like a little boy or kiss him like a lover, but he knew he wanted _Dean_.

He tightened his grip on his coffee mug instead.

'—spark plugs, kiddo,' Dean was saying—had been saying, Sam realized, and he pulled himself the fuck together and tuned back in to the world around him. 'Should have done it before we left California, really, just didn't have the time.' He quirked a smile at him, though there was something off about his eyes—sad or worried or haunted or _something_ , and it bothered Sam that he couldn't tell what it was, or what had put it there. 'You remember the first damn thing I taught you about swappin' em out last year?'

Sam sipped at his coffee. ' . . . sure.'

'Yeah?'

'You bet.'

'I'm all ears, Sam.'

'They're, um. Sparky?' he offered, and Dean smiled, really smiled, a quick, sweet flash of ivory that crinkled the corners of his eyes and lit up Sam's entire world. Sam would have given his left arm for his brother to have touched him then—for a hand in his hair, on his shoulder, squeezing the back of his neck—and for half a heartbeat he was sure Dean was about to, thought Dean was _moving_ to, but then his brother seemed to catch himself, somehow, for some reason, fingers curling in on themselves instead of reaching for Sam, and he turned again to the engine, an odd sort of stiffness in his shoulders, in the line of his beautiful back. Sam watched him for a moment, silently, and after a long moment he thought he recognized it as guilt. _What the hell?_

'Dean, you okay?' he asked.

'Yeah,' Dean said, to the engine block, without looking up. 'Yeah I'm good, Sammy.' He cleared his throat. 'Look, you, uh . . . you don't gotta stay out here, okay? Dad's gonna be out 'til evenin', the way he's snorin', so you can just . . . go read, or . . . whatever. Go back to bed for awhile if you need to, yeah? I'm gonna go into town and get some fuses when I'm done here so we got lights and TV and shit later. Maybe a fan or an air conditioner, if I can find one cheap.' 

Sam tried not to feel as though he'd just been slapped across the face again. _You don't gotta stay out here._ He waited for a minute for Dean to invite him to come into town with him, but Dean said nothing else, didn't even look up from where he was torquing a spark plug, and suddenly Sam felt stupid and young and . . . well, that pretty much covered it. 'Oh,' he said, quietly, 'okay,' and something of what he was feeling must have bled into his voice, because Dean's beautiful, capable hands paused for a minute where he was working, and his brother's head dropped, just a little, eyes closing briefly.

'Sammy, I didn't—'

'No, 's okay.' He swallowed, started to turn back toward the house. 'I get it.' It hadn't any kind of bewildering guilt he'd seen in his brother's eyes and body, then, just . . . annoyance. Maybe he'd just been too clingy last night; maybe he'd pissed Dean off, fighting with their father; maybe . . . he felt a sudden, hot lick of panic in his gut as he remembered the mess he'd woken with between his legs. Oh, God if he'd . . . if he'd said something in his sleep and Dean had—if Dean had—

'Hey.' His brother's hand closed around his upper arm, unyielding as a shackle, before panic had time to blossom into full-blown terror. He tugged Sam back around to face him, eyes tired and closed off, but gentle all the same. 'Sammy, hey. I'm not tryin' to be a bitch, okay? I'm just—' He sighed, let go of Sam to scrub a hand over his own hair, rub at the back of his neck. 'S nothin'. 'S got nothin' to do with you, little brother; this is all me, and I just gotta . . . I just gotta sort some shit out.' 

'What do you mean?'

The twist of Dean's mouth was exasperated and weary as he let his hand fall to his side. 'There some words in there you didn't understand, brainiac?'

'No, I just . . . ' He scuffed at the grass with one foot. 'Sorry,' he said, softly. Because he did understand, he really did; they lived in each other's pockets 24/7, were rarely more than three feet outside of each other's space, and sometimes it got . . . you just needed some room, was all. He couldn't remember the number of motel bathrooms he'd locked himself in over the years, just to be alone for a little while, just to think things through, to remember that he was just _Sam_ and not part of _Sam-and-Dean-and-Dad_. But all the same, Dean had never . . . Dean had never been the one to do that, not to him, no matter how bitchy or needy or whiny Sam had ever been, and he wondered, now, if his brother had felt this same hot, tearing pain in his chest every time Sam had closed a door between them.

 _Course he hasn't,_ he thought, tiredly. _He's not the one in love with you._

He looked up at his brother through his bangs. 'You, uh . . . you think you'll be back for lunch?' he asked, hesitantly. 'I could . . . later I could get burgers ready for us, or something.'

'Burgers'd be awesome, Sammy, yeah,' Dean said, and offered him what was probably supposed to be a smile. It wasn't especially convincing. 'Just, uh. Don't brain Dad with the skillet or anything while I'm gone, yeah? We don't got time for a salt and burn tonight, man.'

Sam tried for a smile in return, was pretty sure he missed. The sunlight was in Dean's hair, and in his eyes, and he was beautiful; and Sam needed—he needed to not be here, needed to be anywhere but here, because he couldn't—'Drive safe, okay?' he managed, and forced himself to get moving before Dean could tell him to go away again. He didn't look back, not wanting to see if his brother had already turned back to the car; just went up the porch stairs and let himself quietly into the house and then went back up to the small bedroom he'd woken in. He wasn't tired, but he ditched his coffee mug and lay down again anyway, pushed his tender face into the pillow that still smelled like his brother, breathed in his familiar scent. There were tears pricking at the backs of his eyes, and this was stupid, _stupid_ ; he was fifteen and a half years old, and he was not going to cry just because his father had bloodied his mouth last night and his brother didn't want him around this morning.

He heard the car start up a little while later, heard the soft sound of tires on a dirt road, and then it was quiet, heavy and still, the only sounds the soft, ambient noise of the forest, drifting in through the open windows, and John snoring on the couch below.

Sam tugged the pillow into his arms and curled up around it, and waited for the sound of the Impala's engine, for the sound of Dean coming home.


End file.
